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By this accounting, I still have the following measures unaccounted for from exposition:

M5-M12 (M9-M12=M1-4) so just leaves M5-M8M23-M24 (same as M20-M21)

I saw an explanation of all the parts of the movement, but I didn't catch the explanation of mm 5 - 8. I may have missed it.

Sonata 4, movement 2, andante con espressioneI'm interested in part of the B section. Richard says m. 21 is Em7b5. This is the same as E half diminished. If you stick a C underneath then you get C E G Bb D which is C9 which naturally goes to F - the next chord is F/A. The Em7b5 also goes to F/A with E climbing to F in the bass. I understand that the half dim. chord often has the feel of a 9 chord with the same kind of function.

I agree with what was written about it.

In regards to Richard's m. 26, with the E nat. indicating an F chord, I hear it too. In m. 25 we have C7-F, and with F in the bass in m. 26, followed by Bb and the recap. in m. 27, my ear wants to hear F for all those reasons. F is V. I hear E natural as a lower neighbour, and when playing it I might want to put more weight on the F.

Did the question about mm 21 - 24 ever get resolved, Greener?

Sonata 4, movement 3, Rondo

I didn't find anything to add or ask about.However, it's an interesting question about when composers choose the time signatures they do. This one is in 2/4 time but is full of triplets. Why not 12/16?

Good catch, keystring. The reason it was missed before is that I was only concerned with finding the source material for the development.

M1-4 are the call and M5-8 are the answer but this is all in F. This is then repeated but this time the answer is changed in M13-16 for the transition to the dominant C major for the second subject.

Sonata 4, movement 2, andante con espressione

Originally Posted By: keystring

Did the question about mm 21 - 24 ever get resolved, Greener?

As I understand it, the outstanding issue was that Jeff wanted his analysis of a movement to F confirmed. He did a first analysis following Gary's account of M21-23 and then we moved onto a discussion of the dim 7 chord. He later posted an analysis of the full B section and we again went off on a tangent leaving him without confirmation but I did that when the smoke cleared so it was all wrapped up.

As I understand it, the outstanding issue was that Jeff wanted his analysis of a movement to F confirmed. He did a first analysis following Gary's account of M21-23 and then we moved onto a discussion of the dim 7 chord. He later posted an analysis of the full B section and we again went off on a tangent leaving him without confirmation but I did that when the smoke cleared so it was all wrapped up.

Correct. I believe the final conclusion of this section is as below ...

Originally Posted By: zrtf90

Originally Posted By: Greener

Since this section is largely construed from development of movement 1, would it be safe to say that we are passing through D minor, shortly visiting F major and then heading straight home to F Major?

M21 is Em7b5. Although the third is absent, it wouldn't be G#.

The rest is pretty much there. The C#dim7 in M22 is a rootless A7 resolving to Dm.

We end up in F, yes, briefly via Dmin, but in M26 the E nat makes it F7 the dominant of M27 Bb.

Is this you mean KS? Let me know if anything else. I'd be happy to go searching for any content we may have covered. If nothing else, I can help with that.

I got stumped on something in movement 1 (maybe just because the discussion was in letter names, but I had it all labelled in roman numerals), so thought I would work up to mvmt 1 by tackling mvmt 3 first. Ha ha ha ha ha.

(Measures: I number my own scores, so my measures are one less than Greener's on this one. I'm showing both, prefacing Greener's with a G.)

I roared through adding roman numerals through measure 58 (G59), and then came to a screeching halt at the B section. No problem I thought, I'll work backwards from the end of the page, and use letters, and then work out the roman numerals. That worked for a while, but eventually it got harder and harder just to work out the letters, especially from about m. 92 (G93) backwards, and I finally screeched to a halt at m.74 (G75).

So then I thought, I need to listen to this and hear what these accidentals are trying to do (wish me luck, to me and my recalcitrant ear). But I haven't gotten myself, the score, and a piano all in a room at the same time yet. Bah.

Maybe I should go back and work through mvmt 1 first after all. At least I have that entirely labelled; I think I just have to get over that little hump to match up my roman numerals with the previous discussion's letter names.

Actually, it's not quite accurate to say that naming the chords with letters got hard. What got hard was seeing a connection between all the letter names. There's so much happening. This seems like a very fluid section. It's not just the incessant I V repetition of the A part.

Then along the way I was trying to audiate the B part, and found what seemed to be nice 8 measure phrases or subphrases to start with, and then that pattern vanished, so again I need to listen to this for real because I'm curious about where the phrases and subphrases are. Is it really a straight run from m.82 (G83) to the da capo, with no fleeting resolutions at all? No wait, re-examining it, the chords suggest a resolution at m.98 (G99), although it's not a real pause because the sixteenth notes keep rushing forward. Anyway, I need to play and listen to this whole B part to hear what's really going on.

More on this: I had played through this before, but it didn't really register. I guess I was thinking "third movement, rondo, simple" and didn't register what seems to be going on. I now suspect from my harmonic analysis is "ternary form, A part simple, B part surprisingly complex, worth a careful listen." Must. Listen. More.

Since this section is largely construed from development of movement 1, would it be safe to say that we are passing through D minor, shortly visiting F major and then heading straight home to F Major?

M21 is Em7b5. Although the third is absent, it wouldn't be G#.

The rest is pretty much there. The C#dim7 in M22 is a rootless A7 resolving to Dm.

We end up in F, yes, briefly via Dmin, but in M26 the E nat makes it F7 the dominant of M27 Bb.

Is this you mean KS? Let me know if anything else. I'd be happy to go searching for any content we may have covered. If nothing else, I can help with that.

Yes, I saw that. I saw the naming of chords, but I was looking for an answer to your question of tonality - whether it was just passing through a key before settling. I think the naming of those chords does define it as a passing through thing.

Meanwhile I've seen PianoStudent88's take on Sonatina 4, especially that by looking at the patterns in Roman Numeral analysis, she can see which sections fit with which sections. That makes a lot of sense, because if a section is, say, in F major one time, and in C major the next time, the notes will be different but the relationship of chords will still be the same. Therefore the RN's may be identical all the way or part way. (If part of the section is modulating to a new key as we've seen a few times, then it won't all be identical.)

Sonatina 5 - movement 1In the Development where Greener saw the D7, I am thinking that the D is actually already present in the pickup to that measure.

One thing I really wondered about is the Eb in the RH beat 4 of m. 37. The chord is identified as Gm, but what is that Eb doing there? The RH melody traces a diminished chord: G, Eb, C#, and that C# adds tension like (as?) an appoggiatura in m. 37 before resolving to D. So is that whole diminished passage a kind of tension which builds to the release in the D?

PianoStudent88 pointed out that m. 1 - 6 was not identical to m. 7 - 12, but that m 1 - 12 formed a unit. I see the same thing from the "call-answer" angle. We have a basic writing exercise in music theory where you write a 4 - 6 measure phrase ending on I-V, and an almost identical phrase of the same length, ending V-I. That's what we have here. P88 then pointed out that at the end of the piece, this 12-measure pattern isn't duplicated, and wrote of a coda. What I hear is that at the end the "call" part keeps getting stretched out and repeated. It can't get answered or the piece would finish then and there. So finally at the end it gets answered and finished. I guess I'm seeing the same thing, but haven't called it a coda (and maybe should).

- I do not see the first movement duplicated in the second movement. A 3 note figure that dips down and up again can occur anywhere in music. Personally I don't find the examples close enough to see a figure being deliberately repeated, but that might be my hearing.

In regards to when D comes in for movement 1, Presto, I'm with Richard that it doesn't really come in until m. 16 with a strong cadence. You do hear D, but it's ambiguous. D could be V of G major, or I of D major, and to me it doesn't shout out "key of D major" until m. 16.

Sonatina 5 - RondoEssentially what Richard and Greener said before. The second half is very interesting. I don't have anything to add. Trying to write out an analysis of the chords in this format makes it too complicated in written form.

Sonatina 5Good analysis, keystring. I like the way you thought about the purpose of the Eb in the first movement to build on the tension and release. We have sadly neglected this aspect of the analyses.

Regarding the duplication of figures, this is a very subjective thing. Mathematicians look for patterns and artists tend to see them more than others. It is often remarked that children look like their parents but they and their parents are not so easily convinced. I was often told my brother and I inherited our dad's features and I often could see his temples and his eyes in the mirror but I never could see my brother in my face.

When my eldest son began to grow facial hair I decided to teach him to shave properly with a wet-shave and a straight razor. The first thing I had to do was remove my twenty or thirty year beard. I stared in disbelief at the reflection in the mirror, I was looking at my brother's chin!

I slaved for hours over Mozart's and Beethoven's sets of variations I dare say I now inject more into the music than the composers intend when I look for 'family resemblances' between movememts. But I also think it increases listening and hearing skills.

Sometimes there is neither a melodic, rhythmic nor harmonic resemblance but they seem to say the same thing, were they blessed with lyrics, and I hear that - a similar mood, emotion or inflection. Sometimes, of course, it's just the composers voice and I can't distinguish the clues that tell me why I hear it.

One thing I really wondered about is the Eb in the RH beat 4 of m. 37. The chord is identified as Gm, but what is that Eb doing there? The RH melody traces a diminished chord: G, Eb, C#, and that C# adds tension like (as?) an appoggiatura in m. 37 before resolving to D. So is that whole diminished passage a kind of tension which builds to the release in the D?

I've gone back to take a listen to see what you mean by this, Keystring. Very neat. If I've got this right, we see this tension/release effect again at M53-54 and M61-62 (in these instances C/G to G.) This is all recap. so it would make sense we are recapitulating on the same theme.

Now, that you mention this -- tension -- where it is quite prevalent to me is in M42 to M45, but I'm not sure why. I see a Bb at the beginning of M42, but as soon as I hear the 7th in beat 4, things feel like they are heating up. Then to G7 in M43 and Cm-M43 and bringing in the 7th on final beat, then A7 in M45 ... Is it the compile of all the 7ths that is affecting this rising tension? At least, is seems this way for me.

Thanks for pointing out, Keystring. I've also gone back to understand what PS88 has identified in Air Suisse, and actually with you on the V I, and I V phrase endings.

Thanks for the link posts, as well Keystring. May just have to go get me one of those Alphorn things. Not sure about how I going to handle it with the elevator and all, but will figure something out .

I see were making good progress. I'll re-post # 6 when we are good to proceed, for ease of finding and identifying start of next Sonatine.

It is not a pleasant day in Toronto today, so another great reason for me to learn more on Sonatine analysis and some dedicated practice.

I posted a long post about #5 mvmt 1 but I deleted it in favour of not making the discussion more chopped up, since Greener and keystring are talking about mvmt 1. I'll gather my thoughts on mvmt 1 tonight or tomorrow, and then when we're done with that I'll repost my mvmt 3 thoughts.

I posted a long post about #5 mvmt 1 but I deleted it in favour of not making the discussion more chopped up, since Greener and keystring are talking about mvmt 1. I'll gather my thoughts on mvmt 1 tonight or tomorrow, and then when we're done with that I'll repost my mvmt 3 thoughts.

No pressure PS88, but just wanted to quickly inquire of how you are coming along.

I know we had been jostling along and varying paces before, so want to ensure we are all on the same page -- so to speak, -- before we move along.

I'm getting fired up for page one of No 6. But, looking forward to seeing any more you may have to share on No. 5.

I seem to have misplaced my annotated score . My questions on this movement were about the progression in the development. IIRC, it's Gm Bb Cm D, and then the recapitulation returns in G. I'm just naming on the I (or Im) chords/fleeting-keys that are played after corresponding V7 (or related) chords.

Richard mentions that this is a daring progression, but I think he mentioned circle of fifths. I wanted to underline that it's daring because it's *not* a simple circle of fifths. Not only does it jump back and forth between major and minor, but it makes a big jump from C minor over to D major.

On the circle (or ribbon) of fifths, we can see the nearby-key movement of Gm Bb Cm, and then D major is far away (the dots are just to try to make this line up):

Eb.. Bb. F.... C... G.. DCm Gm Dm Am Em Bm

I'm going to have to look at the score again to see how the move from C minor to D major is handled.

Not quite sure where to say flipping the switch, but these are the keys I believe we are going through in this section

I agree with you about sometimes not being sure where the switch flips, but I don't quite agree about the keys. More anon.

Originally Posted By: zrtf90

The double blows that have characterised the three movements here are never far away in this double page middle section. But the triads are sparse and the harmony ambiguous. There's a V-I cadence in A at M75/76 and then we're off again into tonal ambiguity until D major appears to establish itself more as a dominant than a tonic not landing on a root position D major until M 107 (and even that is not a triad).

All harmony is ambiguous to me . But I am profoundly curious about the role of accidentals, and I hate having to just call them "colour"," so I have been wrestling with this section mm.59-112 (I'm using Greener's score numbers now). I'm presenting this moving forwards through the movement, but I only figured it out by first working from the back, and finding what seemed to be 8 and 10 measure phrases, and playing sections a lot, and thinking very hard about my scrawl of chord letternames.

Mm.60-63. Em B Em B suggests Im V in E minor. Confirmed by accidentals F# (for E minor's key signature) and D# (for leading tone). This is the relative minor of the piece's overall key of G major, so not a big surprise. The contrast of minor tonality to the preceding major catches my attention, even if just listening aurally I can't *name* what I'm hearing.

Mm.64-67. (Actually, I hear almost all the boundaries in the middles of measures, but I'm going to go nuts if I have to say "pickups to" and "first beat of" every time I mention a measure, so I'm going to see how much I can avoid it. I know, I'll follow the lead of Biblical studies and use "a" for first beat and "b" for second beat. Ok, mm.63b-67.). Anyway, the D natural in m.63 is interesting, but not unheard of in E minor. The C# in m.64 however suggests we're not in E minor any more. Where might we be? The phrase ends with the RH tracing F#7 over two measures, and the LH playing F#, which adds up to F#7 as V7 of either B or B minor.

Mm.67b-75a. These measures start off with Bm F# Bm F#, confirming that we are now in or passing through B minor. This explains the C#'s (completing the key signature of B minor) and the A#'s (leading tone). We're in the minor dominant of E minor, a reasonable place to be from the standpoint of theory and nearby keys, but actually quite interesting. I don't think we've met a minor dominant previously on these sonatinas.

This eight measure phrase starts out just like the first eight measure phrase, but the ending is altered. Well, no big surprise: we'd expect an alteration so we could end back at E minor. Except we don't; we give E minor a complete miss and end up on it's subdominant A, with a distinct ii-V-I cadence (Bm7 E7 A).

Mm.75b-85a. From A chord we move straight to D chord, and A the subdominant if E minor turns out to also be the dominant of D major. The G# sixteenth notes in mm.75 and 77 act in my mind to emphasize the A just above them: like an upside-down trill. The most interesting notes to me of the whole movement are the D#dim tonicizing the Em in mm.78-79. Are we leaping in a slightly wrenching way back to the key of E minor? Nope, false alarm, Em is just the two of a ii-V-I progression in D, with the V-I extended and repeated over six measures, and possibly dressed up with some vii° C#dim to boot (depending how you read mm.80 and 82, or perhaps m.84 is better read as IV, G).

Mm.85b-95a. There's a bevy of diminished chords suggesting the key if the following chord -- G#dim to A, F#dim to G, G#dim to A again, and a V-Im F# to Bm, but we never settle anywhere. That Bm turns out to be the leadin to a conservative vi-ii-V-I in D major, where we started this 10-measure unit.

Mm.95b-107. We flirt with A major again, via a G#m7b5, but it's just a brief flirtation (including the wonders of an Asus chord, and the pleasures of the suspended D resolving eventually down to C#), but really we're in D. The Em7 A D7 G of mm.97b-98a on paper might look like a circle of fifths return to our original key of G major, but try as I might I absolutely don't hear that G as a resting point. So I'd say we've just landed on the subdominant of D major, and then we continue solidly in D major all the way up through measure 108.

The C natural of m. 107 signals a change, and with several D7 chords at the end of this section, D ceases to be tonic, and as dominant announces the imminent return of our original key, G major, when we return da capo to the A section.

I've been thinking about this notion of being in a key, as signaled unambiguously by a cadence, vs. other types of relation to key: fleeting, transitional, passing through, borrowing notes from, briefly tonicizing with a V7 I, etc.

I think my personal roman numerals which I mentioned somewhere not too long ago, with upper and lowercase roman numerals and slash notation for key (or perhaps merely scale) suggests a more definitive relation to key than might be audible in the sound. For example, in my personal notation (when I can get away with it in Baroque and Classical music) an A7 D7 G progression in the key of G is V7/V V7 I, which suggests that we are "in" the key of V (with the A7 in D major) before being back in the key of I. That's perhaps not a great example, because cadences like that are such an idiom that I read them easily as a variety of cadence in G. But dress the music up a bit, and prolong what's going on, and my slashes will start to make think we're really in a key.

Particular example that got me thinking of this is where I said we were in D in m.13 of an exposition, and everyone else said, no, not in D until the cadence and m.16. I think this was in Sonatina #5, movement 1. My slash notations (have to) start to show /V as early as m.13.

And I can't really hear any of this. Other people said they still heard D as dominant in mm.13-15. But I don't know what that sounds like. I have imagined that other people hear the C# intruding into a G major phrase and immediately make some connection like "that's from another key, and here's the tonic it suggests" and then they can hum D, or hear it in their mind's ear. But maybe that's not how even skilled listeners are hearing it at all. The problem is, that I can hear the eventual cadence as a cadence, but I can't hear that we've cadenced on a different tonic (D) than the original (G).

So now I feel like I need to add an additional principle to my paper analysis, which is "we're not in a key until we cadence in it, until then we're only suggesting, or passing through, or borrowing from, another key." But this feels unsatisfactory to me, because while it may produce written analyses which other people will agree with, I feel as if most other people can say things like this based on being able to hear the difference between being in a key vs. passing through it, and I can't.

Richard mentions that this is a daring progression, but I think he mentioned circle of fifths. I wanted to underline that it's daring because it's *not* a simple circle of fifths.

Yep, that's what I was saying!

Originally Posted By: zrtf90

If you look at his path around the circle of fifths you'll find it's quite adventurous. He's achieved it using minor keys and playing on the fact that a dominant seventh closes into both major and minor tonics.

Originally Posted By: PianoStudent88

So now I feel like I need to add an additional principle to my paper analysis, which is "we're not in a key until we cadence in it, until then we're only suggesting, or passing through, or borrowing from, another key." But this feels unsatisfactory to me, because while it may produce written analyses which other people will agree with, I feel as if most other people can say things like this based on being able to hear the difference between being in a key vs. passing through it, and I can't.

I don't think it's that simple.

Other people can't say it's tonic precisely because there's been no cadence! It's not that they can hear that it's not tonic it's that they can't hear whether or not it's tonic until there's been a cadence.

You need good pitch memory to know whether it's a new key or the same one. When I hear a piece on YouTube I can go to the piano (half a house away) and play it on pitch. I don't have perfect pitch. I play an approximate pitch on the piano and know how far away that is. That's just pitch memory. That's how I know whether we're back in tonic or we've gone to the dominant.

You sing; can you sing the root of a chord you hear even if you hear it in an inversion?

If you sing the note, does it help you remember the pitch? If it does, that's how you can tell.

Other people can't say it's tonic precisely because there's been no cadence! It's not that they can hear that it's not tonic it's that they can't hear whether or not it's tonic until there's been a cadence.

Hearing a cadence doesn't tell me any pitch information; it just tells me a phrase has ended. No, that's not quite right, because if you play me part of a ii-V-I cadence, I can hum where it should go. (I think). But I don't have enough pitch memory to remember if that's different or the same than the last time we had a cadence, a few measures ago. And even if you had cadences one right after the other, I don't have a good pitch memory even over a couple of notes to remember if it's different. And even if I can tell that it's cadencing at a different pitch, I can't distinguish intervals quickly and I can't tell if it's cadencing on a distinctly different note, or whether it's remaining within the same pitch *class* and just cadencing an octave up or down.

Quote:

You need good pitch memory to know whether it's a new key or the same one. When I hear a piece on YouTube I can go to the piano (half a house away) and play it on pitch. I don't have perfect pitch. I play an approximate pitch on the piano and know how far away that is. That's just pitch memory. That's how I know whether we're back in tonic or we've gone to the dominant.

These are foreign skills to me. Actually, come to think of it, I do have a little bit of pitch memory in very specific circumstances. Sometimes in choir if we end a phrase on one note, and start the next phrase on the same note a few measures later, I can remember that note. But I have to concentrate very hard to do it. Similarly I have to concentrate to remember the starting pitch from the piano rolling them off, to when we start singing. And that's just one single pitch, and concentrating on it very forcefully, and trying to match it. Not trying to figure out if I'm different by a fifth or by an octave from its previous occurrence when lots of things were going on.

Wierdly, although I can't sing an octave by itself completely reliably, I can do other things with octaves. Like if the basses are singing a phrase ending on my alto starting note of the next phrase, but an octave or two down, I can silently hum along with the basses in my range and get my starting note that way, quite accurately. But if you give me a note and say, "sing an octave", I will very likely be somewhat inaccurate, and if you play one note after another, I will have to cogitate very hard to try to decide if it's anything from a fifth to octave, even if I sing the pitches I'll still struggle.

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You sing; can you sing the root of a chord you hear even if you hear it in an inversion?

No. Definitely not. I can sing the top note easily, and the bottom note less easily, and sometimes I can find the middle note, but I have no idea of the relations between them (like, I can't hear "top is here, bottom is there, and middle in this middle place is a fourth above the bottom so it's a second inversion chord").

But I can pull notes out of the accompaniment somehow for knowing where to come in, and as an alto that means a lot of middle notes, so in context I guess my ability to hear middle notes is much better than my ability on an isolated basis.

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If you sing the note, does it help you remember the pitch? If it does, that's how you can tell.

It does, if I'm doing that thing of hearing something on Youtube and then carrying it across the room to the piano. If I don't sing it, I have no hope of matching it. If I sing it, then I can keep singing it and try notes at the piano until I can hear it's the same note.

Maybe these reductive skills aren't the right skills for me. Maybe there's some entirely different set of learning and assessing that would make sense for what I can do, and what I could improve at and how to improve at it. I mean, reading all the things I've listed here that I can't hear and can't do, you'd think I'd be barely scraping by in choir. But in fact, I think I do pretty well and feel confident in the music we're learning.

I think I get so wound up about this because my paper analysis skills are so far beyond my aural skills, and I feel so inadequate about my aural skills.

Other people can't say it's tonic precisely because there's been no cadence! It's not that they can hear that it's not tonic it's that they can't hear whether or not it's tonic until there's been a cadence.

Let me try this from a different tack than my previous lengthy moan.

Isn't there a sense of whether a phrase cadences in an expected place, vs. an unexpected place? Suppose you had 8 bars in G, cadencing with Am D7 G. Then take the same first 6 bars, but change the last two bars and take on my brute force a cadence in a remote key. Say, Cm F7 Bb. Would people here that the first one cadenced in a natural way, and the second way went somewhere else, with a big wrenching movement?

Play them far apart, so they're not just remembering "it went this way the first time, and this other way the second time."

My belief about how other people hear is that they would hear it as something unusual. But I could be wrong; my general mindset is that I can't hear things in theory, but that other people can, but I'm open to correction that other people can't here them either.

All the same, I think even I might hear that big wrench in the second way. (I'm not at a piano right now, I'm just constructing an example that I think might sound more wrenching than the first example).

If people can hear that the second way does something unexpected or odd, doesn't that imply that they can hear something about what key those first six bars were in, even though there had not yet been a cadence?

(Of course if they don't hear that second way as odd, in general, then I'm going to have to completely rethink my theoretical construct of what music theory means in relation to the aural effect of a piece.)

Isn't there a sense of whether a phrase cadences in an expected place, vs. an unexpected place?

Yes.

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Suppose you had 8 bars in G, cadencing with Am D7 G. Then take the same first 6 bars, but change the last two bars and take on my brute force a cadence in a remote key. Say, Cm F7 Bb. Would people here that the first one cadenced in a natural way, and the second way went somewhere else, with a big wrenching movement?

*I* would if I am in the key of G major. I have a sense of where “home base is”, so if I am in the key of G major, home base is G, the chord, and D7 to G is what I expect for a really strong ending feeling. C D7 G is even stronger, and I would expect the last two chords to have roots in the bass, D to G.

Your Cm F7 Bb is logical to me. It is a smooth MODULATION, which can be a long one, going on in the key of Bb for pages OR immediately jumping back to G, in this way:

Cm F7 Bb G C G/D D7 G

That is I call “just visiting” Bb, or a “peek-a-boo” modulation. Pardon my silly expressions, but I work a lot with little kids who can PLAY this stuff.

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My belief about how other people hear is that they would hear it as something unusual. But I could be wrong; my general mindset is that I can't hear things in theory, but that other people can, but I'm open to correction that other people can't here them either.

I think your perception is extreme. There are people who hear so well, I feel deaf by comparison.

What would it be like to hear anything once, then be able to play it back flawlessly? It is unlikely that a single human being on this planet with a “normal mind” can do what he can do. But I don't enjoy his playing. He sounds like a robot to me.

There other extreme is a rare genetic condition that prevents an individual from perceiving music as anything else but noise. If you love music, you are hearing and you are hearing well. The fact that you do not hear the way I do, or the way someone else does, should not stop you from developing in any of a million different ways.

The D# in the soprano of m. 38 is still an appoggiatura creating tension which resolves into the D, sliding into it. At the same time we have the tension of the two major 7 chords which are only a semitone apart but in different inversions. That same feeling of tension and resolution is there.

Ebm is vi of G minor. That same Eb pops up in m. 39 as the 7 of an F7 chord.

Reading through the newer posts, the word "cadence" comes up again. If my question was answered before, then I apologize, because I missed it. This involves the notion that a key is not established before there is a "cadence". Richard, we may have different meanings and this should be cleared up.

As I understand it, "cadence" broadly means that a section, phrase, etc., is either pausing or ending. This pause, ending, (semi-)conclusion is signaled by a number of things. Often the music slows down, and the sudden appearance of a white half note or break in the rhythm is visible to the eye. Sometimes we have a rest in the measure. There is also a chord progression that can go I-V, I-IV (the 'pause' part), or V-I or V-vi for the deceptive cadence.

Note the mention of V-I. The V-I heralds a cadence. But a V-I is not always a cadence. The problem is that when theory books teach about cadences they are lazy, and only mention these chords. Thus what we get stuck in our minds is that the combination of V-I or I-V is cadence, when in fact it can simply be two chords that work well together, but don't herald an ending. We use V-I and "cadence" synonymously, and shouldn't.---------------------I think that what Richard is actually saying is that we need something to let us know we are in a given key, settled down into it. This is often done through a series of V-I-V-I-V-I at the start of a new key. the V keeps pointing to the I and finally we "get it" that we're in that I (tonic). If anyone is studying the Sarnecki book, (level 1), there's a lot about "tonic prolongation". Here you are trying to keep the tonic going. some suggestions are:I I6 (C - C/E)I viio6 I6 (C - Bdim7/D - C/E)I V6 I (C - G/B - C)

The idea is that you have something that lets you hover around your tonic chord so that you hear it long enough to get the "C-ness" if it's in C. The reason for the V6 instead of straight V is that you have a gentle bass movement (Bass going C,B,C) which doesn't give a strong cadence (conclusion) feeling.

I think the idea is that you need to get pointed at the tonic for long enough for it to register. It's like those commercials, "We eat JackO's cereals - O - O - O - how good, Jack-O. SO-O-O-O jackilicious, O so good! Want some, Jack? Oh!" The O and Jack stays in your head forever.

You sing; can you sing the root of a chord you hear even if you hear it in an inversion?

If you sing the note, does it help you remember the pitch? If it does, that's how you can tell.

I'm a singer, and suspect still function a lot like a singer. Chords don't play much of a role for me when I'm singing. I discovered a few years ago that I had learned something subconsciously that is actually done: bringing the 7 & 8 notes closer to each other than a semitone, and the same for 3 & 4. "Ti Do" slip together, and ditto for "Fa Mi". Of course, the "Ti" has an implied V, and the Fa is also the 7 in a V7. It's a different kind of hearing. I think that it can become confusing when mixing instruments that are so different.

The other thing about hearing is that some of it is subliminal and elusive. We hear things that we don't know we hear, and we don't know how. When we try to be too clinical about it, we can actually drive create roadblocks as well as anxiety. It's like the tale of the millipede that was asked how it kept its feet from tangling up, and then got too mixed up to know how to walk. Hearing has many angles to it, and hearing can also grow when we start pursuing new things in music. Some angles of it are probably personal, and different from one person to the next.

The other thing about hearing is that some of it is subliminal and elusive. We hear things that we don't know we hear, and we don't know how. When we try to be too clinical about it, we can actually drive create roadblocks as well as anxiety. It's like the tale of the millipede that was asked how it kept its feet from tangling up, and then got too mixed up to know how to walk. Hearing has many angles to it, and hearing can also grow when we start pursuing new things in music. Some angles of it are probably personal, and different from one person to the next.

Reading through the newer posts, the word "cadence" comes up again. If my question was answered before, then I apologize, because I missed it. This involves the notion that a key is not established before there is a "cadence". Richard, we may have different meanings and this should be cleared up.

My use of the term thus far has implied a final cadence (perfect or plagal) strong enough to establish key unless I have qualified it as an imperfect, or interrupted cadence - they are the only four terms I normally use to reference a cadence.

A V-I progression is not a cadence except at the end of a phrase when the melody ends on tonic (or in some cases fifth but bass is on tonic root).

When I'm discussing establishment of key I would not consider tonic-dominant harmony enough, on it's own, to establish tonality. If there's a change of key there must be a final cadence in that new key, and usually a new phrase begun in that key, before that new key has been established.

Thank you Richard. It's important to have our terms straight rather than assuming. This is how I learned it too.

Ok, exploring this --- If you're discussing the final cadence, then it is happening at the END of the passage that is in that key. In practical terms in reality, something isn't right here. Music happens in real time moving from now into the future. So going by the idea that the key is established by the final cadence, our listener hears the music, and finally when the cadence comes, he knows what key he was hearing, or what the tonality was. We cannot expect him to then mentally rewind what he just heard, and re-hear it in that key. Hearing music moves forward, in real time.

In analysis we might get a clear sense of what key a section was in once we find the concluding cadence. But in reality, the tonality has been established before that. It has to be. I suggest that the ideas of "extending the I chord" which I brought forth are at least a part of the answer to this.

This is also why I was confused by your initial statement, since for me the tonality is established near the beginning, not at the end. I think that I understand now where you're coming from. I also use the final cadence as part of the process of establishing what key a passage is in.